Those You Love
by Kaede Ravensdale
Summary: His smile. His touch. His voice. The ones you love never truly leave you and time heals all wounds, but it doesn't always take the pain away.
_This was really hard to right and I don't know why I did this to myself. It's 2 am and I didn't edit this because just writing it almost made me cry because it's sad and I'm tired._

 _Have a nice unpolished sad short one shot._

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Fifty years since she'd last seen him. Fifty years since she'd last been there. Yet Douga, his home town, the town where they'd lived together for a number of years once all of the fighting was over and peace finally came, hadn't changed. Neither had she. Small mercy that no one recognized her as she walked the streets that, over the course of time, had become familiar Clare made her way to the outskirts of the town.

The little house that he had built for them and for the family they'd hoped to have still stood, though it was in a state of ramshackle disrepair. The roof close to collapsing. The walls crooked atop a cracked foundation. The land around it overgrown with weeds. As abandoned as if a Yoma attack had occurred on the premises, alone and forgotten and forlorn as it gazed sightless towards the nearby village. For a few moments she stood there in front of it, staring, re-evaluating her decision to tear open old wounds that had never really stopped bleeding in the first place. Then, reluctant, she continued forwards and passed through the sagging doorway.

Nothing had been disturbed since the day that she had left the place five decades before, though the elements had made their way in through the broken out windows. A considerably layer of sludge formed from a mixture of mud, rain water and dead leaves from seasons passed lay piled up along the walls. The table and chairs he'd constructed from hand reduced by her immense strength to little more than splinters. The pots, pans and other implements he'd used to cook their meals each night scattered about where she'd thrown them before she'd fled the place and all the memories it held. Images of a happier time that swarmed her the instant she set foot inside, reminding her of the mistake she'd made in falling in love with a human. What had once been heaven was now a husk filled with echoes of what had once been.

The place where she'd stood on many a warm summer's, the shutters open to allow in a breeze as she watched Raki putter around in their vegetable garden or tend to the rather ornery horse he'd purchased. Where she'd fallen asleep beside him each night and awoken every morning wrapped in his warm arms. Where they'd twice experienced the joyful pride of expectant parents, and the grief of losing that child upon birth. Where he'd grown old, while she'd stood by helpless and unchanged.

As much as it hurt to be standing there again, without him, when she closed her eyes she could almost imagine it had been nothing but a horrible dream. Could feel his warmth. His touch. His warm breath and soft lips on the back of her neck. Hear his voice. Of course, it wasn't true, and when they opened again it all came crashing down again. It had been fifty years already, yet she still was couldn't accept the reality of the fact that she'd never see Raki again.

Unable to take it any longer Clare left, fleeing the cold shell through the back door and heading up the large hill just beyond it towards where he was waiting for her beneath a gnarled old tree. The view from the summit was considerable, miles stretching before it in all directions, and during the warmer months the oak's sprawling bows provided sweet and merciful shade but in the dead of winter it stood stripped bare and provided no shelter from the snow. The wet white powder coated the ground and crowned the trio of grave markers, a large one and two smaller unmarked ones. A father buried with the children he never got to know in life. Reaching up to clutch the ring that hung on a chain around her neck with one hand, she knelt slowly in front of the monuments. Eyes locked on the weather-worn contours of his name and the inscription carved beneath it. A fleeting, sad smile at the thought of the shock the other citizens of Douga must have received when the little village had been suddenly stormed from all directions by her silver-eyed sisters, each wanting to pay their respects to the man that had been their friend, comrade or old brother. At the memory of the sea of pale metallic hues that had stretched to and beyond the summit of the hill.

 **Raki**

 **Warrior. Brother. You will be missed, but you will never be forgotten.**

"It's been a long time, and…I'm sorry for that. It's just that, after losing you like that. Watching you waste away to nothing…" Clare bowed her head, her pale blonde hair falling in a curtain across her face, and when she raised it again the light of the setting sun caught in her silver eyes. "I've missed you, Raki."


End file.
